Prodigy is not a product line aimed at 'killing' C4. It has nothing to do with C4 and never will. It is a product line aimed at lower price points and limited, consistent functionality. Hmmm, I wonder what market that could be aimed at primarily? Lets think about this for a second. Crestron partners with Intelity to provide the ICE solution for the hospitality market. Less than a month later they issue a press release about the forthcoming Prodigy line.

Would it make sense to build a compact, quickly deployable, brain dead easy to program system that would work in hotel rooms? Yes. Is it of benefit to any other market to build a low cost solution? Yes, residential, commercial, government, educational (although the Crestron iMedia line is doing well there), entertainment, hospitality, military, medical and corporate markets could also benefit.

C4 builds the product they build and it seems to be a decent product with some nifty functionality. I personally dont care for the use of hard drives (moving parts) in the C4 systems. While the use of hard drives is great for media playback and storage I prefer my homes program to run from flash based memory only.

The PMC2 (Prodigy processor) does not have an on screen display from what I have been told. It does have a two way zigbee pro handheld remote (PLX2) with the gateway built in to the box. The lack of the OSD prevents an apples to apples comparison with C4 as thats the backbone of the C4 control concept. I prefer to simply grab my wand remote and control what I need to control while getting metadata to the LCD on the wand. Before you hardcore C4 guys flame me into a charcoal nugget, I am aware that you can receive some metadata to the C4 wand but it is my understanding that it is limited and you only have one (maybe two) lines of text available at any one time. If I am wrong about this then feel free to post the correct amount of data that can be displayed and how much data can be displayed on one screen at a time.

My point is that Crestron may have a product line, with Prodigy, that opens up a new dealer channel for the CI's who want to do Crestron but cannot support the full line, yet. They now have a product line that allows for PRICE POINT competition with C4 systems backed by the 40+ years of Crestron's existence. The lack of OSD or Rhapsody or (possibly) the lack of a multi controller environment with Prodigy may give the C4 dealers some points to sell against Prodigy. If so great, if not great. I personally dont care about C4. My employer sells it but I have nothing to do with that product. I deal only with our Crestron jobs. We are happy to see Prodigy coming along as it gives us another option for our (max) $50k client who cannot afford a full Crestron system. Anything above $50k is automatically moved to Crestron, even if that "lowers" perceived functionality by the lack of Rhapsody and and OSD.

Hopefully this clears up the misconception that Crestron is trying to wipe C4 off the map. This is about the Crestron motto of "Every Room Connected" and that alone.